#sun palace

I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I just have so many feelings about soft!Moiraine and soft!Siuan in their hut. Please forgive my rambling but I needed to get this out.

Moiraine’s been trained to be this stoic person. Not unfeeling. Not cold. But just someone who cannot show emotions. This would’ve meant something bad happening to her in the Sun Palace. She was then brought to the White Tower where again, showing emotion is so taboo and frowned upon. This state of mind… of being really, has been engrained in her for the longest time. How would she know how to act like anything else?

Through the course of her stay in the Tower, we see that she develops the most unlikely friendship with a fisherman’s daughter. The girl is light, open - able to speak freely and not afraid of doing it. Curses like a sailor, but this just endears Siuan to her more. Siuan shows her what things could be like. What life could be like. She didn’t always have to feel as if she was playing political chess. Life didn’t always have to feel like something she was fighting, but something she was living.

On the other hand, we get Siuan who experiences the total opposite of Moiraine’s life. She’s a daughter of the River. She is free, she is outspoken. They don’t have much, but she is alive. Come that unfortunate day she’s separated from her father as he sends her off to Tar Valon. In The White Tower, Moiraine always reminds her that behind the grandness of this place is a menace - there are plots and tricks and mindgames. So many things you need to navigate to be able to survive. You couldn’t always speak your thoughts. You couldn’t always do what you want. One wrong move could be your downfall. Developing powers aside, this training helps her rise to the position of Amyrlin Seat where the need to maintain this alternate persona is imperative to keep detractors at bay.

The strain is great on both of them, but entering their hut where it’s just the two of them, the masks, the pretense… these are all unnecessary. There is no Moiraine Sedai or Siuan Sanche, the Amyrlin Seat. They are just simply Siuan and Moiraine.

Welcome to Versailles.

”I’m about to drag this country out of the darkness, and into the light. We must build our own destiny. A new France will be born, and this palace will be her mother.” - Versailles 2015